Selected Essays | Page 4

system of prohibition, of political economy. Teutomania has passed out
of men and gone into matter, and thus one fine day we saw our cotton
knights and iron heroes transformed into patriots. Thus in Germany we
are beginning to recognize the sovereignty of monopoly at home, in
order that it may be invested with sovereignty abroad. We are now
beginning in Germany at the point where they are leaving off in France
and England.
The old rotten condition, against which these countries are theoretically
in revolt, and which they only tolerate as chains are borne, is greeted in
Germany as the dawning of a splendid future, which as yet scarcely
dares to translate itself from cunning[3] theory into the most ruthless
practice. Whereas the problem in France and England reads: Political
economy or the rule of society over wealth, it reads in Germany:

national economy or the rule of private property over nationality. Thus
England and France are faced with the question of abolishing
monopoly which has been carried to its highest point; in Germany the
question is to carry monopoly to its highest point.
If, therefore, the total German development were not in advance of the
political German development, a German could at the most take part in
present-day problems only in the same way as a Russian can do so.
But if the individual is not bound by the ties of a nation, the entire
nation is even less liberated by the emancipation of an individual. The
Scythians made no advance towards Greek culture because Greece
numbered a Scythian among her philosophers. Luckily we Germans are
no Scythians.
As the old nations lived their previous history in imagination, in
mythology, so we Germans live our history to come in thought, in
philosophy. We are philosophical contemporaries of the present
without being its historical contemporaries. German philosophy is the
ideal prolongation of German history. If, therefore, we criticize the
oeuvres posthumes of our ideal history, philosophy, instead of the
oeuvres incomplètes of our real history, our criticism occupies a
position among the questions of which the present says: that is the
question.[4] That which represents the decaying elements of practical
life among the progressive nations with modern State conditions first of
all becomes critical decay in the philosophical reflexion of these
conditions in Germany, where the conditions themselves do not yet
exist.
German juridical and political philosophy is the sole element of
German history which stands al pari with the official modern present.
The German people must therefore strike this their dream history
against their existing conditions, and subject to criticism not only these
conditions, but at the same time their abstract continuation.
Their future can neither be confined to the direct denial of their real nor
to the direct enforcement of their ideal political and juridical conditions,

for they possess the direct denial of their real conditions in their ideal
conditions, and the direct enforcement of their ideal conditions they
have almost outlived in the opinion of neighbouring nations.
Consequently the practical political party in Germany properly
demands the negation of philosophy. Its error consists not in the
demand, but in sticking to the demand, which seriously it neither does
nor can enforce. It believes it can accomplish this negation by turning
its back on philosophy, the while its averted head utters a few irritable
and banal phrases over it. Moreover, its horizon is so limited as to
exclude philosophy from the realm of German actuality unless it
imagines philosophy to be implied in German practice and in the
theories subserving it. It urges the necessity for linking up with vital
forces, but forgets that the real vital force of the German people has
hitherto only pullulated under its skull.
In a word: you cannot abolish philosophy without putting it into
practice. The same error, only with the factors reversed, is committed
by the theoretical party, the political party which founds on philosophy.
The latter perceives in the present struggle only the critical struggle of
philosophy with the German world; it does not suspect that all previous
philosophy has itself been a part of this world, and is its complement, if
an ideal one. While critical towards its opposing party, it behaves
uncritically towards itself. It starts from the assumptions of philosophy,
but either refuses to carry further the results yielded by philosophy, or
claims as the direct outcome of philosophy results and demands which
have been culled from another sphere.
We reserve to ourselves a more detailed examination of this party.
Its fundamental defect may be reduced to this: it believes it can enforce
philosophy without abolishing it. The criticism of German juridical and
political philosophy, which has received through Hegel its most
consistent, most ample and most recent shape, is at once both the
critical analysis of the